Saturday, 8July06
Highlights: helping the Bari family in Bantul
At 8:30 this morning, Dan & I took our scooters & headed back down to Bantul to throw a little more effort into helping some of the friendly faces we’ve met so far.
Usually every weekend, a group of volunteers from school get together for this,,, but they’re taking 2 weeks off. I’m impatient, so I looked for an opportunity to work- and found one with the first family we worked with 3 weeks ago.
Dan & I got lost only 2 or 3 times on the way down there,,, about an hour ride by scooter. Both of us agree, though, that going through Bantul under our own power was an experience in itself, instead of seeing it through the window of a bus.
We’ve been so busy with school and organized trips- it’s been easy almost to forget that there’s a disaster area just 37 kilometers south of us.
The home was roughly in the same state as we left it 3 weeks ago.. you could make out the floors through a heavy layer of dirt & piles of broken bricks; and where walls once stood. Pak Bari pointed out the rooms where his wife, 3 daughters and 2 sons were as the roof and walls were collapsing. He was at a mechanic shop fixing his scooter when the quake hit that day. Everyone here survived without too many scrapes or bruises. Whew! What a happy thing to come home to find!
Dan & I spent the next 4 hours clearing out the remaining bricks & debris, sweeping the dirt from half the house, and searching for bricks that can be re-used.
Bricks used to cost 110 Rupiah each (1 cent); now they’re 250 Rupiah. With Indonesian wages- that really hurts.
The government promised $3,000 worth of money to each family… but there are other natural disasters (floods in Sulawesi & Kalimantan, Tsunami recovery, etc…) and the government isn’t rich to begin with- so Pak Bari isn’t holding his breath over a check in the mail. The government is providing each person in the earthquake region 3,000 Rupiah (30 cents) a day for food for 3 months though.
Nobody has come yet to haul away the debris we cleared off the house foundation 3 weeks ago. Hopefully soon. Pak Bari is going to rebuild his house with his own hands, starting next month, when he can afford to buy more bricks. He’ll start small, building half of the home first, then expanding over the next few years.
Both Dan & I left feeling glad we were able to come & help again. I plan on coming back tomorrow.
Highlights: helping the Bari family in Bantul
At 8:30 this morning, Dan & I took our scooters & headed back down to Bantul to throw a little more effort into helping some of the friendly faces we’ve met so far.
Usually every weekend, a group of volunteers from school get together for this,,, but they’re taking 2 weeks off. I’m impatient, so I looked for an opportunity to work- and found one with the first family we worked with 3 weeks ago.
Dan & I got lost only 2 or 3 times on the way down there,,, about an hour ride by scooter. Both of us agree, though, that going through Bantul under our own power was an experience in itself, instead of seeing it through the window of a bus.
We’ve been so busy with school and organized trips- it’s been easy almost to forget that there’s a disaster area just 37 kilometers south of us.
The home was roughly in the same state as we left it 3 weeks ago.. you could make out the floors through a heavy layer of dirt & piles of broken bricks; and where walls once stood. Pak Bari pointed out the rooms where his wife, 3 daughters and 2 sons were as the roof and walls were collapsing. He was at a mechanic shop fixing his scooter when the quake hit that day. Everyone here survived without too many scrapes or bruises. Whew! What a happy thing to come home to find!
Dan & I spent the next 4 hours clearing out the remaining bricks & debris, sweeping the dirt from half the house, and searching for bricks that can be re-used.
Bricks used to cost 110 Rupiah each (1 cent); now they’re 250 Rupiah. With Indonesian wages- that really hurts.
The government promised $3,000 worth of money to each family… but there are other natural disasters (floods in Sulawesi & Kalimantan, Tsunami recovery, etc…) and the government isn’t rich to begin with- so Pak Bari isn’t holding his breath over a check in the mail. The government is providing each person in the earthquake region 3,000 Rupiah (30 cents) a day for food for 3 months though.
Nobody has come yet to haul away the debris we cleared off the house foundation 3 weeks ago. Hopefully soon. Pak Bari is going to rebuild his house with his own hands, starting next month, when he can afford to buy more bricks. He’ll start small, building half of the home first, then expanding over the next few years.
Both Dan & I left feeling glad we were able to come & help again. I plan on coming back tomorrow.
posted by jonathan adventures at 9:19 AM
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